Amanda Scott (38 page)

“She is staying,” Gwenyth said.

“I think you have more to tell me than that.” She spoke in a low voice, but Gwenyth could not miss the undertone of determination and knew her aunt meant to have the whole tale.

“Do you know, ma’am,” she said wistfully, “I well remember a time, and not so long ago at that, when Eliza and Davy and I were able to intimidate you and not turnabout, when you were content to leave well enough alone.”

Lady Cadogan chuckled. “I remember. I recall, too, how abruptly that state of affairs ended when Tallyn returned from America and took the three of you in hand. Ah, but his first day back in London was a day to remember. Astley’s, I believe, is where you and Davy had slipped off to that morning.”

Gwenyth grimaced, remembering only too well. “Our lives certainly changed,” she said. “Meriel had been both mother and father to us for nearly three years by then, but she was in France and you were busy launching Eliza into society, so Davy and I had been left pretty much to our own devices.”

“You had a tutor,” Lady Cadogan reminded her.

“Yes, and we very soon got a new one once Joss discovered the mischief we’d been up to,” Gwenyth said ruefully. “Soon after that he packed me off to Miss Fletcher’s.”

“And Miss Beckley was a schoolmate there, you say?” Lady Cadogan’s eyebrows lifted in a gentle query.

Gwenyth sighed, recognizing her intent. “I cannot tell you the whole tale here and now, Auntie Wynne, believe me.”

“Then,” said her ladyship placidly, “you must excuse yourself to the countess and seek your bedchamber, for I mean to know what’s what before this night is done.” She glanced at the card players, adding dryly, “I suppose we may leave them alone. Sir Spenser’s honor is safe enough so long as he continues to enjoy good health.”

Choking back a gurgle of laughter, Gwenyth rose obediently to bid her hostess good night.

F
IFTEEN MINUTES LATER, IN
Gwenyth’s bedchamber, Lady Cadogan settled herself into an armchair near the single tall window and demanded to know what mischief was afoot. “For if the pair of you was disappointed to learn of Lyford’s absence or pleased by his return, you fooled me, and that’s a fact.”

Gwenyth shot an oblique glance at Annie Gray, who had been waiting to put her to bed. Annie’s eyes twinkled and her lips were pressed tightly together, so Gwenyth was not surprised to see her turn quickly away to pull back the covers on the bed.

“Why have you brought that Beckley girl here?” Lady Cadogan demanded, ignoring Annie. “If all she wanted was to speak with her guardian, she might easily have written to him.”

Gwenyth, turning to her abigail, said, “Help me into my nightdress, Annie, and then you may go.”

Although Lady Cadogan was clearly on the verge of demanding instant elucidation, she sighed and drew aside the heavy blue velvet curtain to look out the window. “This room overlooks the river, I see. I hope your friend is as well-situated.”

“She is, though her bedchamber looks onto the courtyard.”

Lady Cadogan chuckled. “Then, for her sake, we will pray for temperate weather. The stable block forms the southwestern corner of that courtyard.”

Gwenyth smiled but said nothing, for her head was buried just then in the folds of her lawn nightdress. Annie would not leave before brushing out her hair and loosely plaiting it for the night, but she departed at last, and Gwenyth saw at once that her aunt would brook no further delay. Accordingly, she explained the situation as quickly and clearly as she was able.

“Very odd,” Lady Cadogan observed when she had finished. “Despite Lyford’s position and his clear duty to secure the succession, I must say he has shown no inclination to marry or even to make himself particularly agreeable to his neighbors, several of whom have eligible daughters. But why he should have chosen to leave Miss Beckley at school when she might as easily have been kept here under his eye, I am sure I cannot tell you.”

“Has he said nothing at all about her, ma’am?”

Lady Cadogan shrugged. “He don’t say much about anything. He dines with us when he’s home, but Almeria looks down her nose at him one minute and nags at him the next to provide her with money. They don’t get on well.”

“Then he does have money problems?”

“Everyone does,” said Lady Cadogan tartly. “Good gracious, child, we have been at war for years, and prices just keep going up. To keep body and soul together is the most anyone can hope to do, and the old earl was not one to guard his pennies, so I doubt that Lyford inherited much more than debts.”

“Then Pamela may be right,” Gwenyth mused. “He may be either misusing her fortune or planning to force her to marry him so that he can gain complete control over it.”

“It is possible,” Lady Cadogan said doubtfully, “though he has not appeared to me to be that sort of man. And whatever the provocation, Pamela ought never to have run away from school. He cannot have liked that, nor will Almeria if she should learn of it. Like as not, she’ll take a pet at hearing no more than that Lyford has been put out of temper, for she wants to turn him up sweet just now, before he receives any more of her bills.”

Gwenyth lifted one eyebrow. “Turn him up sweet, ma’am?”

Lady Cadogan laughed. “I had a letter from Davy in this morning’s post. He and his friend Mr. Webster mean to pay us a visit. He didn’t see fit to say when, but he did say he meant to turn
me
up sweet, so I daresay we may look to see him any day.”

“He wants money, then.” She knew her brother.

Her ladyship’s thin shoulders lifted in a casual shrug. “Nothing new in that. He will have it that Tallyn keeps him too short by half, desiring him to learn methods of economy.”

“Well, that will never happen,” Gwenyth said, sitting on her bed and drawing her knees up so that she might tuck her chilly toes under her bedclothes. “Davy doesn’t try, of course, but Joss believes one ought to live as cheaply in London or at Oxford as in the backwoods of America. Unless,” she added wryly, “one has one’s position as the twelfth Earl of Tallyn to uphold.”

Lady Cadogan thoughtfully examined the fingernails on her left hand. “He would sympathize with Lyford, I believe.”

“But Pamela is not expensive, ma’am,” Gwenyth protested. “Even if she now wishes to cut a dash—”

“I was speaking not of Miss Beckley but of the ancient dowager.” Her hazel eyes danced mischievously. “I know I ought not to call her so, but I do admire Mr. Coleridge’s poetry, and somehow the phrase popped to mind one day.”

Gwenyth chuckled. “I expected her to look a great deal more decrepit than she does.”

“Oh, she is not decrepit in the least. Uses that cane more to emphasize what she says—bangs it on the floor, you know—than to help her walk. On the other hand, it is not difficult to think of her as something of an albatross around poor Lyford’s neck.”

“Oh.” Gwenyth thought about that for a moment. “Is she really on the lookout for a new husband?”

“She is. Since she cannot wind Lyford round her thumb and will not be able to live in the style she likes if he removes her to the dower house, as he is certain to do if he ever does marry, she says she must.” Lady Cadogan grimaced. “I must say, the old earl did not leave her well to pass. She expected at least to receive her own dower money, but when he died, it was found that he had wasted most of it, gaming and whatever.”

Gwenyth knew better than to ask what her aunt meant by “whatever,” so she observed tactfully instead that she supposed the old earl had been very ill in his last days and might not have used the best judgment in managing his affairs.

Lady Cadogan stared at her. “Ill! He was no more ill than I am. He was still going just as strong the day he died as he ever had, the lecherous old goat.”

“But the newspaper reported that he died in bed here at—”

“He died in the Covent Garden fire,” Lady Cadogan snapped, “and …” But here, although it was clear that she had nearly said more, she folded her lips tightly and looked away.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Gwenyth said, swinging her feet over the side of the bed and leaning toward her. “You don’t end the tale like that, ma’am, not with me. I know perfectly well that the fire at Covent Garden Theater began in the middle of the night, long after the evening performance had ended. If the earl died in that fire, he was not in the theater, and if he was neither there nor safe in bed as the
Times
reported, then where was he?”

“Oh, he was in bed,” the viscountess said grimly, “but the bed was in Hart Street, in a house across from the theater.”

Gwenyth’s brow wrinkled in concentration. “Some of those houses were scorched, I know, but I thought they saved them all.”

Lady Cadogan snorted. “’Twould have been a deal better for all of us, I promise you, if Number Three had burnt flat to the ground without a trace of its inhabitants.”

“Aunt!” Gwenyth stared at her in shock, but when Lady Cadogan returned her gaze without a blink, the truth struck her with some force. “Goodness,” she breathed, “a mistress?”

“And more shame to him! Eighty-six years old, he was, and still as much a rake as he’d been at twenty. One of his mistresses was even older than he was!”

Gwenyth couldn’t help it; she burst into laughter. “
One
of his mistresses? How many did he have?”

But Lady Cadogan stiffened indignantly. “I am sure I have no idea. One was more than enough, I believe, however beholden Almeria may be to the woman for managing to get him home without anyone else’s being the wiser. That cannot have been easy.”

“What happened?”

“They were awakened by all the noise of the fire wagons and the shouting, and I suspect, in his guilt, old Lyford thought the Day of Judgment had arrived. In any event, his mistress said he was so startled that he leapt straight out of bed and collapsed. By the time she reached him, he had breathed his last.”

“And she?” Gwenyth tried to think how to put the matter delicately. “She won’t … that is, she must realize that Lady Lyford would pay for her silence. Won’t she—?”

“We needn’t fear that,” Lady Cadogan said crisply. “She is no flightly girl, but a sensible woman in her fifties, for which we may be thankful, because she quite understood the necessity for discretion and refused all offers other than to pay the expenses of her journey. Said she’d had all she wanted from his lordship while he lived.” She grimaced. “Generous to a fault, I daresay, and probably with Almeria’s money, for he was not so generous to her. It is as well that the woman did not ask for anything else, for although Almeria didn’t know the state of her own affairs at that time, I’ve no doubt but what she would have handed the old earl’s corpse right back and told her to bury him herself.”

“But then she might have taken her tale to Lyford.” Gwenyth’s imagination boggled as she tried to visualize a scene between the late earl’s mistress and his heir.

After a small silence Lady Cadogan said carefully, “That would have been something to see. I trust you won’t cross him, my dear. I have seen him out of temper, and it will not do.”

Remembering that she, too, had seen Lyford out of temper, Gwenyth did not contradict her, and their conversation moved to safer topics until Lady Cadogan bade her good night and left her to her own confused reflections. It was not long, however, before fatigue overcame her and she drifted into dreamless sleep.

She was awakened the following morning by the sound of curtain rings rattling against the rod as her bedchamber was flooded with sunlight. Opening her eyes, she beheld Annie’s plump form silhouetted against the window, one arm still raised as she paused to look out.

“Good morning,” Gwenyth said sleepily.

“It is that,” Annie replied, letting her hand fall and moving away from the window. She was smiling. “The sunlight sparkles on that river like … well, I don’t rightly know what, m’lady, but ’tis a beautiful sight, and no mistake.”

Gwenyth sat up and bunched her pillows behind her. “Have you taken to doing the chambermaid’s tasks, or is the abbey short of servants?”

Annie clicked her tongue against her teeth as she picked up a tray from a nearby table. “Just wanted to see your chocolate was hot and that that no-account lass didn’t forget you like your toast crisp.” She settled the tray across Gwenyth’s lap.

Gwenyth surveyed its contents and smiled with approval. “It looks fine. What kind of jam is that?”

Annie peered at the dark mixture. “Some sort of berry. Shall I send for marmalade?”

“No. Is Pamela awake yet?”

“The only person I’ve seen is his lordship. He was up with the birds and left for the stables nigh onto an hour ago. He don’t appear to be one for letting the day get on without him.”

Gwenyth turned her attention to applying jam to toast, but a few moments later, when she saw Annie taking a sprigged muslin round gown from the wardrobe, she said quickly, “I think I’ll wear my blue habit, Annie. If the morning is as lovely as you say, I believe I’d enjoy a ride along the river.”

“You didn’t bring your mare,” the abigail said, giving her a sharp look but exchanging the round gown for the habit.

“I daresay his lordship will have a horse suitable for a lady to ride,” Gwenyth replied airily.

“And a groom, miss,” Annie said grimly, still watching her.

Gwenyth sighed. “Yes, Annie. Even I am not so foolish as to ride over unknown countryside without a knowledgeable groom.”

Twenty minutes later she left the house by way of the courtyard and, remembering her aunt’s comment the night before, found her way to the southwest corner without trouble. When she stepped through the narrow door in the wall, the stable appeared to be deserted. Except for the stirring of hooves on straw and an occasional whicker, there was no other sound.

“Hallo!” she called.

The only response was a second rustle of straw and another, louder whicker, coming from a stall twenty feet away, near the stableyard entrance. A noble chestnut head appeared over the gate, and alert brown eyes gazed curiously at her.

Gwenyth chuckled and moved toward him. “I didn’t bring you any sugar,” she said, “but perhaps you won’t mind. My, you are a handsome fellow, aren’t you?” She held her hand out to him.